Dear Grace,
The sun is just rising here at 8:40am. It’s a dramatic show of pink, purple, and orange. Our days are very short now in the Netherlands. We are quite a bit further north than I have ever lived and it makes such a surprising difference in the winter, and also in the summer when the sun doesn’t fully set until after 10pm. I don’t mind the dark and peaceful season.
Even so, I look out at my garden with so much excitement and anticipation for spring. I can’t wait to see what comes up. Our house has large gardens on either side. Since I am not working and we are all in lockdown, they have been a wonderful creative outlet as I settle into my new country and new home. They were are pretty overgrown when I arrived. Luuk likes to build, do house projects, and work with wood, but gardening isn’t his thing. As soon as he went back to work and I had long days alone I set out pulling stinging nettles and crab grass and pruning with a little clipper until I made it back to the far end on the east side. Luuk helped as well with the bigger trees and cleaning up all of the branches. We had to snip them into little bits to fit in the compost bins that get picked up by the town. He has a hand-me-down wood chipper from a neighbor for the bigger branches. We watched the wood chipper scene from Fargo and laughed about his small chipper with dull blades that got clogged up with every other branch.
Luuk built a beautiful deck on the back side of the house, but left a pile of sand and big paving stones from the construction in the front garden and let nature take over. It is the most visible garden from the street and I really wanted to tackle it. After working on it for 3 months now, it has come a long way. I moved the sand that had grown thick mounds of crabgrass using a pitch fork and a rake to claw through the densely woven rope-like roots; and with a shovel and wheelbarrow hauled the sand to other parts of the garden. I mixed it in with the thick clay soil that is so common here on the dike. Then I moved big paving stones from their moss-covered piles and laid them in a new row along the patio and made a path to the deck. The rest are stacked neatly for another project. I am almost finished turning over the soil and and removing the grass and weeds to make new beds. Sometimes while I was digging I found bulbs or a cluster of roots from a plant that looked like it was supposed to be there and I carefully put them back in the ground.
At first I thought the huge cypress bush shaped into an ugly ball overwhelmed the space and needed to go, but I hesitated to make such a big change. I poked around on the internet to find instructions on pruning and found a Japanese bonsai gardener in the UK on youtube. For the better part of a week I watched him trimming various conifers while explaining what he was doing and making philosophical observations about life. He says the coronavirus lockdown has given him new opportunities to express himself on youtube. They are a nice slow TV experience. He has bonsais that he has been working on for 30 years. I am inspired by his patience and vision to create beauty in concert with nature. In one video called, Improving Large Pines & Creating Bonsai From Difficult Material, he turns a ragged twiggy shrub into an interesting and beautiful work of art. I tried my best to make our lumpy cypress (talk about difficult material) into a bonsai. Its still a work in progress. If I am still here in 30 years maybe it will eventually become something interesting.
Last week we spotted a tree with red clusters of velvety red seeds and wanted to know what it was. It was in a field nearby that is preserved as a wetland area for birds. Luuk saw a sucker and pulled on it and it easily came out of the ground. I wasn’t sure how ethical this was, but we strapped the baby tree to the back of his bike and brought it home. I used my plant finder app to identify what it was and saw that it was a staghorn sumac and not native to Europe (and maybe invasive), so I felt less guilty. I remember that you like sumac and look forward to the brilliant red leaves in the fall. I planted it and am looking forward to watching the baby tree grow. At the moment it looks like a twig sticking out of the ground, but it has a special place in the garden and should be a fast grower. Hopefully it will be the showpiece I want and always remind me of you.
There are some other beautiful small trees and shrubs that are clues of the previous owner’s original design. From last summer I know there are also two big patches of red bistort, some sunflowers, yellow loostrife, and self-seeded hollyhocks. Luuk said there was a path there before with red rocks, as I was clearing and digging I found it and just last week laid a layer of mulch. Now it looks like an organized space ready to come to life in a couple of months. I sent some pictures to uncle Mark, too. His favorite thing was the fence at the back of the garden. Its a traditional style of fence made from willow branches that Luuk made. I love it, too.
Many of the plants from the other side of the house can be divided, so I can fill my new beds with those divisions. I’ve already planted five rhubarb root divisions from one big plant — I hope I did it right and they come up this year in their new spot. I covered them with branches from the pruned cyress for a little protection until warmer weather. I also moved some tiger lilies, shasta daisies, big root geraniums, and a wild rose. I’ll probably also move some heartleaf bergenia and ladies mantle, too.
One thing I want to plant is pimpernel. We were watching a nature documentary with Luuk’s mom and we saw these butterflies called pimpernelblauwtjes, or blue pimpernels. They had disappeared from the Netherlands and conservation efforts have been able to restore their populations. We learned that they lay one hundred eggs. Which they lay one at a time in a pimpernel flower. I want to see if we can attract them to our garden. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
Neighbors have stopped to chat when they walk by and have introduced themselves. I took holiday cookie plates to the ones that live closest to us and now feel more like I am a part of the community. In the covid times, it’s nice to get closer to those that live nearest because you can always talk outside from a safe distance, or meet in small groups for coffee or wine without breaking the rules. One of our neighbors is a dairy farmer. They have a state of the art barn where the cows can go through an automated milk machine when they want, and they have padded mattresses to lay on. Most of the season they also graze in the field on the other side of the dike. We go there often to buy ice cream, milk, vanilla pudding (in Dutch, vla), yogurt, butter, and milk all made right there. It reminds me of grandpa and grandma’s dairy farm and is another small way I feel at home here.
I have my Dutch residency now with permission to work and the equivalent of a social security number. On the back of my id card it says: Verblijf als familie- of gezinslid by L.I. Van Dijk (Residence as family member of L.I. Van Dijk). Heart emoji. With the residency official I was finally able to get health insurance and am working on getting all of my medical history filled out and records transferred. It’s a big project. I got a little emotional reading my medical transcripts and the notes from the doctors and biopsy results. I remember the rush of fear when googling comedo, micropapillary, cribriform, luminal necrosis, and high nuclear grade. As I was going through the records I was stunned to read that my breast cancer was actually stage 2. How did I not know that at the time? Luuk and I talked about it, and in the end we both thought it was probably best I didn’t know. It’s behind me now. Monday I meet my new doctor here Monday and now its just a matter of routine check-ups. I imagine they will all continue to all show that in fact I am as healthy as a horse.
I was so glad we had each other at the time. You were so strong throughout your breast cancer treatments, I never noticed you complain or seem down and it reassured me that I would get through it too. The memories of seeing mom overcome by such a forceful downhill battle so suddenly after her cancer diagnosis haunted me, but I also had your experience to hold onto and it gave me hope that I would be ok. When I was feeling down toward the end you empathised with me as we shared how we hated our wigs, the grossness of our finger and toenails falling off, how our feet hurt, what foods we could stomach, and just how bone tired we were. You shared with me the picture of you at your lowest and it touched me so deeply: you recovered from that place and so would I. Somehow we always found a way to laugh at ourselves despite it all and every time we talked I felt better and so grateful to have you. So often I think about how close you and mom were growing up as twins on the farm in Iowa and the sweet simplicity of the 50s and 60s there. I love how you and I always say we are really cut from the same cloth. Like how we always misplace our phones, have them on silent, or forget to bring them with us; how we both leave cleaning the kitchen to the last; and we both wake up early and spend the first moments of the day with an extra hot cup of hot tea (coffee for me). It makes me feel like a part of the close bond you shared with her and more at home within myself.
Your life has always been one of solitude and a bit isolated on the farm. Has much changed for you these days? I imagine things are about the same and hope you stay healthy and get a vaccination soon. In my new quiet rural life, so different from the hustle of New York City, there are many mornings when I sit and sip my coffee and you are on my mind.
Well, I didn’t mean for this to get so long. I was planning on a short thank you for the Christmas package, and then calling in the afternoon. If you are free later, I would love to hear your voice. In the meantime I will be likely be digging in my garden!
Love you.
January 13, 2021
